I don’t want to spend the rest of my life giving speeches.

The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.

When you make a TV show, they always say you’re a guest in someone’s home. Online, you’re a guest in someone’s face. So that’s why I try to make it sound and look and feel very inviting and attractive, because I know that I’m in your face.

I could never give relationship advice to anybody!

Liberty doesn’t work as well in practice as it does in speeches.

Very rarely do I talk off the top of my head on stage. I’m not an improv guy. I’m a writer-guy who presents what he’s written.

Be as polite to the custodian as you are to the chairman of the board.

I was always taught not to answer no questions. I’m not really good at answering them because I get agitated so fast.

I realised a little bit to my astonishment that I can give a lecture for a thousand people, and there will be this tumultuous applause, so, you know, I have the feeling well, it can’t be all that bad.

I’ve always had to conquer fear when I’m on stage. Basically, I was and still am a very shy person. It’s absolutely in conflict with what I do. But once I deliver the first joke I’m okay. It’s like I’m out there all by myself just delivering my lines to nobody in particular without ever trying to notice the audience in front of me.

In retrospect, I can see I couldn’t talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching about. Ha! Like, that sure made sense!

Eventually you get to this point where you understand what you want to do and get across and sound like.

I really think that there was a great advantage in many ways to being a woman. I think we are a lot better at personal relationships, and then have the capability obviously of telling it like it is when it’s necessary.

When I talked to him on the phone yesterday. I called him George rather than Mr. Vice President. But, in public, it’s Mr. Vice President, because that is who he is.

Example is leadership.

Take advantage of every opportunity to practice your communication skills so that when important occasions arise, you will have the gift, the style, the sharpness, the clarity, and the emotions to affect other people.

Some years ago I became president of Columbia University and learned within 24 hours to be ready to speak at the drop of a hat, and I learned something more, the trustees were expected to be ready to speak at the passing of the hat.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that – is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

When Caroline Kennedy managed to say ‚you know‘ more than 200 times in an interview with the New York ‚Daily News,‘ and on 130 occasions while talking to ‚The New York Times‘ during her uninspired attempt to become a hereditary senator, she proved, among other things, that she was (a) middle-aged and (b) middle class.

It’s really fun to be on stage in front of people.

When you walk out onstage in front of 65,000 people, it can bring you to tears.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

Resist the need to be ‚right‘ all the time or to always have the last word.

Talk low, talk slow and don’t say too much.

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

I go onstage and I talk, and I remember what I’m saying, and I track it.

There will be days when I walk in an arena and people will cheer and then there might be days when I walk in an arena and people might boo, but it all sounds the same to me because it’s all just noise that lets me know that I’m relevant.

I thought my life was mapped out. Research, living in the forest, teaching and writing. But in ’86 I went to a conference and realised the chimpanzees were disappearing. I had worldwide recognition and a gift of communication. I had to use them.

I’ve spent too much time giving speeches, traveling the world.

Conflict cannot survive without your participation.

I write all of my own speeches.

We give speeches and pin ribbons onto uniforms, etch names into walls. And all that is fine, but too often, all those tributes, all those words aren’t always backed up by action. And that felt like such a stark contrast to me, because, as we all know, our military is all about action.

A career is born in public – talent in privacy.

A master performer like Bill Clinton never lost sight of the fact that as president he had to project confidence and power, but if he was speaking to a group of autoworkers he would adjust his accent and his words to fit the audience, and do the same for a group of executives.

When it comes to knowing what to say, to charm, I always had it.

People make suggestions on what to say all the time. I’ll give you an example; I don’t read what’s handed to me. People say, ‚Here, here’s your speech, or here’s an idea for a speech.‘ They’re changed. Trust me.

I’ve been thinking of humorous things since I was… I can’t remember when. All the way through elementary school, all the way through junior high, all the way through high school, through college and after college, I was thinking of the same kinds of things that I say in front of an audience now.

I couldn’t talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching.

Respond intelligently even to unintelligent treatment.

I’m not a person that socializes very well.

I have been – I have spoken in Bir Zeit a number of times.

The Four Levels of Comedy: Make your friends laugh, Make strangers laugh, Get paid to make strangers laugh, and Make people talk like you because it’s so much fun.

A man may speak very well in the House of Commons, and fail very completely in the House of Lords. There are two distinct styles requisite: I intend, in the course of my career, if I have time, to give a specimen of both.

Extemporaneous speaking should be practiced and cultivated. It is the lawyer’s avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech.

I worked with Congress on legislation, gave speeches to CEOs, military generals and Hollywood executives. But I also worked to ensure that my efforts would resonate with kids and families – and that meant doing things in a creative and unconventional way. So, yeah, I planted a garden and hula-hooped on the White House lawn with kids.

I don’t have any oratory skills. But I would not use them if I had.

I have been a youngster and I know speeches are boring.

In my opinion, the only way to conquer stage fright is to get up on stage and play. Every time you play another show, it gets better and better.

I have never talked publicly or privately about the Jewish people, including conversations with President Nixon, except in the most positive terms.

In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.

There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.

It could be if I fight in front of one person or one million people. It’s still the same emotions.

Seven hundred thousand people who have dementia in this country are not heard. I’m fortunate; I can be heard. Regrettably, it’s amazing how people listen if you stand up in public and give away $1 million for research into the disease, as I have done.

Tell the audience what you’re going to say, say it; then tell them what you’ve said.

No matter how much you rehearse on that stage, once you add 30,000 screaming people with flashing cameras into the equation, it’s pretty intense.

I can move any crowd.

I write all my sermons.

How can a president not be an actor?

When you meet with someone and you try to assess whether they’re telling you the truth or not, there’s several things you can do. You judge demeanor and credibility. You look at corroboration.

Communication is a skill that you can learn. It’s like riding a bicycle or typing. If you’re willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of evry part of your life.